Boundary No Boundary

The Reality

On the 15th May 2018 I set off on Stage 1, from the dam at the end of the Lower Lake at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and headed east. I had several Ordinance Survey maps with me, (in paper form and as an app on my phone,) all my painting kit including 3 wooden painting panels, sting relief spray, hay fever tablets, a stool, a camping table, a battery pack to recharge my phone, lots of water and a vague notion of where I was heading.

I'd marked the Wakefield District boundary on my map with pink highlighter and marked the start and end of each stage.

Note - The numbers in the photograph relate to colliery sites and is part of another project but I soon realised that my route would take me through many reclaimed, disused or neglected ex-coalfield areas.

At the start of the stage I took a screen grap of my location along with a photograph of where I was heading and uploaded these to the Boundary No Boundary Facebook page and Twitter using the hashtag #BoundaryNoBoundary

I wanted people to be able to follow my progress as the project unfurled.

It was a very hot day. This good weather continued, pretty much, for the entire duration of the project. I kept on imagining I was cursed/blessed (depending on your perspective) and that I was undertaking some ritual connected to the weather. I had a lot of time to think such thoughts.

After leaving the sculpture park grounds the boundary crossed the A637, headed under the M1 and out into open fields.

The boundary followed the River Dearne for the first half of the journey which was proving to be quite a pleasant experience. I recorded the sounds I heard on my phone. (They can be found on the Sounds page)

The boundary then disappeared down a tunnel under a railway line

Tempting though it was I decided not to crawl through the tunnel but elected to follow my plan of staying as close to the boundary as possible without harming myself, trespassing or being reckless. So I headed to Darton.

I talked to people on the journey and explained what I was doing. I handed out postcards I'd had printed with details of the wedsite, email address and other ways of getting in touch and being involved in the project.

I made notes of conversations as I went. (They can be found on the Shared Memories page.)

To get back to the boundary I had to detour about a mile but soon picked it up again at Woolley Grange, a new housing estate built on the site of Woolley Colliery. This was at the top of a steep hill that forms part of Woolley Edge

There's still a couple of rows of terrace houses left from the original Woolley Colliery Village built to house the miners. There's a memorial to the pit there but all that's left of the pub is the pub sign and the school is now a house, The rest is scrub land.

(If you would like to know more about Woolley Colliery there is a remarkable book by Eddie Downes called Yorkshire Collieries 1947 - 1994. In the chapter about Woolley Colliery he writes in great detail about its history and importance to the yorkshire coal fields. It will break your heart)

Leaving Woolley Colliery Village behind I headed further uphill. All the while I was aware I had to find a spot to paint.

At the very beginning, when this project was just an idea, the whimsical part of me had a notion that I would be able to find a spot on every 3 mile stage where I could see a great panorama before me. I would paint that panorama on 3 panels and move on to the next spot. I would thus produce 60 paintings portraying a complete 360 degree view from the Wakefield District looking outwards.

The more realistic part of me knew that Wakefield District is not a perfectly circular hill and the rest of the world is not flat, the conditions required for this plan to work.

The bit of me I try to listen to most told me not to let the fact that it wouldn't work put me off from actually doing it.

For most of this Stage I had been walking along the bottom of a shallow river valley, which was very picturesque but I couldn't see more than 500 yards in either direction due to trees.

The walk up the hill towards Woolley Village also had limited viewpoints and I was beginning to realise that at the heart of this whole project was a grand folly.

I continued up the hill through a tunnel of trees.

I amused myself with various plan Bs.

I would produce 60 paintings of bark/brick walls/bus shelters!

I was nearing the end of stage 1 and also my tether.

Suddenly the tree line dropped away and I was in open fields at the top of Woolley Edge. Turning around I could see for miles, from Emley Moor mast, across the Dearne Valley where I had just walked and over to Barnsley. Exactly the view I was looking and hoping for.

I was very lucky. All I needed now was to be lucky the following 19 times and the plan would work.

I carried on my journey until I reached the end of Stage 1, a few hundred yards away near Staincross, then turned back to my chosen viewpoint.

I found a spot on the footpath, next to a converted farm building, to paint.

And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I had chosen to paint with acrylics, a medium I hadn't used for over 20 years, mainly because I thought it would produce vibrant results and would dry quickly. I had a couple of tryouts earlier in the year and the results had been ok.

On this day, due to extreme heat, the paints dried almost immediately enabling me to work quickly. There was no drawing first, just paint.

I marked in my head where the limits of each of the three panels would be in relation to the landscape.

I painted on one panel at a time, never spending more than 5 minutes on one panel before putting it on the ground, picking up another panel and painting it on my knees. I didn't put the panels together until I had finished them. I didn't want to paint one picture in three sections but rather three paintings that would hopefully fit together.

The owner of the building leant over the wall to say hello. He was a retired teacher and part-time falconer. He kindly refilled my water bottle and I carried on painting.

All the while I was wondering about the painting process and which part of the project was the piece. (I was trying not to use the word 'art' as I kept on recalling the opening sentence to E M Gombrich's The Story Of Art - 'There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists'.) Was it the paintings, the walking, the conversations?

Or was it the idea?

After about two and a half hours I decided the paintings were finished.

When do you know when a painting is finished? That can be a complicated question and many people will give different answers.

For me, during this project, it was when I stopped painting.

Over the coming weeks, most paintings took around 3 hours, some a little less, some over 4 hours. It depended on the complexity of the scene and other factors. (The painting from Stage15 overlooking the M1/M62 junction from the summit of the disused Lofthouse Colliery pit stack took over 4 hours. I was sitting in long grass that played havoc with my hay fever so had to pause every few minutes to sneeze)

I never added to the paintings later on. Once I'd put my paints away, that was it. They were a record of what I saw and painted that day. I didn't want to give myself the luxury of saying 'I can add that later'.

I think that was important. It also made me paint on stages where I really didn't feel like painting. It wasn't an option not to paint.

On those days to come I would often sit down, very grumpily, and tell myself I had to paint, that it would be alright, that in 3 hours time it would be over and the paintings would be completed. It was as if I was expecting someone else to paint the paintings and I just had to sit there and wait until they were done. And it worked.

There were only 3 times when I thought I had a legitimate reason to not finish the paintings.

One was on top of a disused tip near Whitwood overlooking the Aire and Calder Canal. It was at the end of the rather difficult Stage 13 and I could see the rain coming my way. There was no shelter so I would get soaked. I turned the painting face down to protect them and sat and waited it out.

Another was Stage 8. Most of that route ran along fields next to the A1, many impassable due to nettles, brambles and thick woodland. Any footpaths had long since been ploughed up. Although it hadn't rained the morning dew meant that after an hour my trousers and boots were wet through. I would eventually have to walk 14 miles to cover the three-mile stretch of the boundary. I took my boots off hoping they might dry a little, put my feet inside a carrier bag to keep warm, had my back turned to the constant noise of the A1 (which was only 10 ft away) and painted.

And then there was stage 16 and a dry and dusty field overlooking the M1 near Kirkhamgate. I asked the farmer if it was ok for me to paint in his field. He said it was but warned me that the cows were very curious, not dangerous, just curious.

I spotted the cows, quite a way away, so settled down to paint. It seemed that every time I looked up the cows got nearer. Like some ruminant version of the children's game Grandmothers Footsteps, or Statues, every time I looked up the cows got nearer and nearer until I was backed up against a wall with one of the cows licking my pallet.

At that moment I thought it would be ok to stop and have a nice tale to tell about why three of the paintings were just a few dabs of paint and some curious licking like smudges.

Instead, I shooed the cows away in what I hoped was a confident manner, me walking slowly forwards, gently but firmly wafting both arms in a coordinated underarm bowling technique I figured was appropriate whilst the cows walked impressively backwards. We ebbed and flowed like this for a few minutes until I think they got the message and settled down to continuously fart for the next couple of hours.

Back to Stage 1

When I started I had no idea how the painting would turn out but I was pleased it was quite detailed. You could cross reference the painting with the OS map and find everything was where it should be. The painting had a freshness to it and felt contemporary. I had made a start and I felt confident I could carry this through to the end of the project. Which was a relief

(The paintings can be found on the Paintings page)

I marked on the map the place I had painted from as well as lines marking the field of vision covered by the paintings. These were later highlighted in yellow. I would have to connect with left-hand line on the next staged if I was to hope to complete my plan of a complete panorama.

Note - The photograph below shows the lines marking the overlapping fields of vision at the west of the boundary.

I packed my paints away, clamped the three panels together for ease of carrying and headed back down the hill, retracing my steps back to where I started the day.

Along the way, I saw a stone. I photographed it in situ next to a compass showing how it was aligned to the north and I picked it up I collected a stone on each Stage. They can be found on the Stones page

It was a good day and, as I've commented earlier, I just had to be lucky another 19 times.